Full Circle
by JinnySkeans
Summary: For SasuSaku Month 2013. Day 7: Contrary to popular belief, Sasuke is NOT the scariest Uchiha.
1. full circle

**hey, y'all. it's sasusaku month.**

**prompt 1: holding hands.**

* * *

Sasuke thinks that if this is where it all ends, he has much to be grateful for.

She's beautiful in sickness and old age, pale skin wrinkled and with laugh lines around her eyes. She smiles at him, pretty pink lips and all, and her hands, once so sleek and deadly, are gentle where he holds them tight in his own.

If this is where he must say goodbye to her, forty-two years of marriage, two wonderful children, and six grandchildren later, he can't begrudge God for taking her away from him.

Their family isn't there at the hospital with them. Sakura, willful and proud as she was the day he married her, has sent them home with smiles and kisses and gentle scoldings to take care of themselves, and each other. There is to be no grief, she has decided.

As though a person can decide a thing like that.

Sasuke shakes his head and stares at her hands, listening to the dim beeping of the heart monitor. At the moment, it's the most precious sound in the world to him, because it means Sakura's still alive.

He knows their time together is running out. So does she. She's a medic, but more than that, she's the wisest person he's ever known. Not even Shikamaru, for all his shrewd strategy, can challenge her bone-deep intuition. And the end is coming soon.

There is to be no grief, she has decided.

"You'll need to make sure Ita-chan registers the twins for the Academy," Sakura tells him benignly, propped up on her pillows as she ticks off things for him to do like a grocery list. "He's so scatterbrained about that. And make sure that Mikoto-chan's husband is taking her to her prenatal appointments. Without me around, I know she'll try and skive them off, but…"

Sasuke knows he shouldn't be angry, but he is. Because here she is, his wife, his heart, minutes, hours, maybe less than that from leaving him forever, and she's giving him jobs to take care of like it's a normal day.

She'll die, and he'll be left to suffer. To survive, alone. And that was always his destiny, wasn't it. Whether he died at sixteen in the wrong battle with his much-missed brother, or whether he watches his world succumb to sickness and old age all these years later, it seems that Uchiha Sasuke's destiny has been to live long and suffer.

What he wouldn't give, to switch places with her.

"Sakura," he interrupts her, voice gruff and deeper than it used to be. She's not the only one who's gotten older. His back aches perennially, relic of straining so hard in his youth. He's got a bad set of knees and his eyesight isn't what it used to be. Deep lines around his mouth, he sees himself reflected in green eyes that never lost their shine, and wonders what he'll be tomorrow, when he wakes up and she doesn't.

Sakura pauses in her diatribe, sees the look on his face, and sighs.

There is to be no grief, she has decided.

"Don't do this, Sasuke-kun," she murmurs. She's never dropped the honorific, even after all these years. Even when just a simple _Sasuke_ would suffice, even when he's never so much as dreamt of adding –_chan_ to her name. "We said we wouldn't do this."

"_You_ said we wouldn't do this," Sasuke corrects her harshly. "I never agreed."

She shakes her head and sits up higher on her pillows. The heart monitor neither slows nor accelerates. Her hands in his are still. And he wishes the rest of the world could join them frozen in time, frozen in yet another argument, the way it must always be for his heart to keep beating with hers.

"I've got no chance of surviving this," she says simply. "You knew this. The kids knew it. Hell, even Naruto knew it. And it's _okay,_ Sasuke-kun. It's okay."

His eyes narrow at her, because how can _anything_ be _okay._ Nothing will ever be okay, again. Not until his name joins hers on the memorial stone will anything ever even remotely _approach_ 'okay.'

"I've done everything I've ever wanted to do," Sakura tells him, with a secret smile. "It's been such an adventure, with you."

Against his will, he smirks back at her, because 'adventure' is exactly the word he'd use, too. From childhood friends to reluctant teammates, from schoolyard crushes to sworn enemies, from shy first kisses to explosive hours spent writhing in satin sheets, from changing diapers at midnight to missions carried out under cover of darkness…

Never a dull moment. Never time for anything but the grandest adventure of all:

Marriage.

And family.

"The kids are okay," Sakura goes on, ticking off her laundry list as her pulse begins to weaken. "They'll miss me, so will the grandkids, so I need you to be there for them as much as you can. And _you,_ mister, are gonna make sure you wear your reading glasses when you're reading, d'you understand?"

"Damn it, Sakura."

"No, I'm serious. Because that Council needs to have someone with a lick of sense perusing the mission reports and if you can't see the writing properly, imagine how terribly all that can…"

"Sakura. What about me."

She pauses again. Sighs again. Sits up a little straighter. Still thin and delicate, still beautiful even with frosted hair and laugh lines, still the stubborn girl he married.

And he grips her hands tighter, because though she has decided against grief, he hasn't.

"I'm…I'm a fuckin mess without you," he admits, deciding that he's never been one for words, but now that he's run out of time, here they all come full force, begging to be heard. "I can't even wrap a Christmas present, how the hell am I supposed to get on without you?"

"It won't be that bad, Sasuke-kun. It'll be…"

"It was supposed to be you and me," he snaps, giving in to his anger, because anger is the best deflection for marrow-deep _sorrow_ and that's all he's capable of processing at the moment. Because their last moments shouldn't be spent in a hospital room, hands intertwined and arguing with each other, but here they are. "Always. You and me. That's what you promised when you married me."

"This was always bound to happen, whether it was me first or you. And…"

"_You promised_ I'd never be alone, if I stayed with you!"

And Sakura's green eyes well up with tears and she smiles and she pulls on his hands until their foreheads touch. And Sasuke thinks that maybe his eyes really are going because it's hard to see her even up this close, but then he realizes that he's crying, too.

"You never will, Sasuke-kun," she vows, fingers trembling inside his. "I'll never, _never_ leave you. You'll _never_ be alone. You still have Itachi and Mikoto. The grandkids, all of them adore you. Naruto, and Sai, and the others. An entire _village_ who relies on you. Sasuke-kun never worry about loneliness anymore. It doesn't apply to you. It can't."

"I have family and friends," Sasuke tells her, repeating words screamed to him on a warm, balmy night by a wild fairy girl, "but without _you,_ it'll be the same as being alone."

And Sakura lets out a choked sob, and she releases Sasuke's hands only to wrap her arms around his neck instead. He holds her, tightly, committing this to memory, because in the morning, that's all he'll have. Four decades, countless embraces, kisses taken for granted, and this is all he's got left. Time running out. Down to the wire.

"I'll miss you _so much,_" she whispers, and he wonders if that's true of heaven, if everyone in heaven can miss those on Earth the way he knows he'll miss her. "I can't…I can't thank you enough. There aren't words, in any language, to thank you for what you've given me. I'm so sorry, Sasuke-kun. I'm so _sorry._"

It's a strange twist of fate, that fifty years practically to the day have passed since the day a little girl begged for a little boy to stay, and the little boy offered the little girl a thank you; now, the positions are reversed, and an old man begs an old woman not to go, and all she has to offer him is her gratitude.

Strangely, bizarrely, it is enough.

Full circle. They've come full circle.

"Please take care of yourself," she begs him, her voice muffled by his shoulder. And she fits like she always has. "And the family. They'll need you. Promise me, Sasuke-kun."

"Still annoying," he breathes into frosted pink hair, and she giggles through her tears.

"Always," she promises. "Always, Sasuke-kun."

And this is where it ends.

Lonely, but never alone, because that's what she promised with her last breath, Sasuke closes his eyes and tries to begin again.


	2. basic anatomy

**prompt 2: lessons learned**

* * *

It had all seemed like such a _good_ idea when he'd approached her.

Sasuke was a good shinobi. He'd go so far as to say a great shinobi. He'd go so far as to say the best shinobi in the history of shinobi, if asked.

But there was one area of his impressive array of jutsu and repertoire of battle maneuvers that was decidedly lacking:

The medical aspect.

Granted, it wasn't like he'd had much time to devote to reanimating dead fishes and sitting around for countless hours reading books and scrolls and ancient tomes on the human body, back when he was on the road hunting for power and devolving into some frothy-mouthed madman bent on aimless revenge. His time had been better spent honing his skills with his sword and meditating on how beautiful his brother's death would be.

Sasuke had no interest in becoming a medic-nin – he knew he lacked the necessary chakra control and overall patience required for the job – but it wouldn't hurt to know a basic healing jutsu or two in case he was injured on a solo mission, or separated from the medic on a team.

It just so happened that his former and current teammate, Haruno Sakura, had had enough time in her life to read every scroll in the universe on medicine. And as a man who gave credit where credit was due, he had to concede that she probably knew better than anybody else in the _universe_ about healing, next to the Hokage.

It was a hugely convenient asset to be teammates and friends with the best medic in the world. He'd asked her after practice one day, as politely as he could, if she would teach him a healing jutsu or three, and of course, with a smile, she'd accepted.

It would be absolutely nothing, he knew, to learn everything she had to teach him. Yes, chakra control was a must, but he could hold his own. Besides, he had the Sharingan; he predicted her sitting down opposite him with a dead fish between them, and Sakura would use her Mystical Palm Technique to resurrect the fish, and he would study her with his Sharingan and copy the entire jutsu and the whole thing would take maybe five minutes, tops.

Even now, looking back on it, it had seemed like such a good plan.

Sasuke had long since learned, though, that the best laid plans often ended in excruciating failure.

"It's a matter of rolling your chakra," Sakura was explaining for the umpteenth time, sitting beside him on the grass one sunny afternoon. Her arm were held aloft, palms crossed over one another, hands glowing with balmy green chakra. "Keeping it loose while you conduct the internal examination…then, when you find the area that needs attention, refining it."

In theory, that made sense. But Sasuke was having a difficult time concentrating, and he attributed it to Sakura's unexpected – and completely insane – method of teaching.

There was no dead fish or wounded animal or cadaver for them to practice on.

Instead, like a deranged woman, Sakura was continually slicing up her own thigh and forcing him to practice on _her._

"This is insane," he'd said, the first time she'd whipped out a kunai and drawn a thin cut across her leg, above her knee. "What the hell are you doing?"

"This is how Tsunade-shishou and I used to practice," Sakura explained simply, paying no attention to the blood trickling from the shallow wound. "It's a way to gauge how the trainee is molding their chakra, by actually feeling it. It helps us correct wrong moves."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "Does it also help if the _trainee_ makes a mistake and blows your leg off?"

Sakura laughed. "Oh come on, Sasuke-kun. You're not gonna blow my leg off. Just _concentrate._"

And yes, that was sound, reasonable advice. Just concentrate, Sasuke-kun. No big deal. Just concentrate on stitching my skin back together, decidedly above my knee and extremely close to my _micromini skirt_…

Of course, he couldn't very well admit to Sakura that the location of her continual thigh-slicing was making him uncomfortable. He saw no reason why she couldn't cut up her arm, or her shin, or her shoulder; but she insisted on taking the kunai to her _thigh_ and whenever he had to touch the skin there, his brain went haywire.

And the Sharingan only ever helped if he was really _focusing_ on something.

"Try again," she instructed, cutting herself even deeper. She'd had to heal herself the last time, because Sasuke's perfect eyes couldn't help but catch a glimpse of her underwear as she sat next to him with her leg outstretched, and as a result, he'd botched the healing completely and tore the cut deeper with his chakra.

_What kind of kunoichi wears a skirt?_ he thought in frustration, even though, in her defense, Sakura was wearing civilian clothing at the moment.

"Refine your chakra," Sakura ordered, as Sasuke fumbled his hands to activate the technique. "Just calm down and focus. See where I've been cut," and she pointed out the area to him, "and focus on healing the tissue beneath the skin first."

Sasuke steeled his resolution, determined to ignore the fact that he was operating on Haruno Sakura's glistening thigh and the fact that he could see her underwear, and tried again.

Her brow knit in pain as he forced his chakra into her system, and she shook her head; quickly, he called off the technique, irritable at his constant failure. What was he doing wrong?

"Less chakra, Sasuke-kun," she advised him, healing the cut herself in half a second, and opening a new one for him to work on on her other thigh. "This is a good area to practice on because it's muscular, and torn muscle tissue is a disaster on the battlefield. If someone gets you right here, for example," and she palmed the inside of her thigh, and Sasuke almost choked on his own saliva, "they could sever your femoral artery and you'd bleed out where you stood. It's crucial to know how to fix an injury, and that means knowing how to balance your chakra so you're not bombarding the patient with hostile energy."

Prickled at her criticism, he exhaled sharply through his nose and said flatly, "I'd rather practice on your arm."

Sakura frowned, clueless as ever, and asked, "How come?"

He felt the back of his neck burn and prayed she couldn't see it.

"Like I said, this is a good area to practice on because…"

"I _said_ I'd rather practice on your _arm._ Better yet, a fish. Or an Academy student."

"You're not making any sense, Sasuke-kun. It's…" Then, her eyes widened and she blushed, apparently realizing why he was so uncomfortable.

The awkward tension that settled between them was thick enough to slice with a knife. Sasuke regretted opening his mouth, because now his discomfort had spread to Sakura as well. Was it the worst thing in the world, really, to have to touch the upper thighs of a pretty girl?

The girl he knew he'd one day marry if he could ever figure out how to tell her to marry him?

Then, Sakura's expression became chilling and stern, and she smacked him upside the head.

Shocked, he stared at her with his mouth agape, and besides the pink flush still on her cheeks, there was no trace of the kind, patient girl who'd been teaching him up till now. Nope, this new chick? This was _all Tsunade._

"You idiot," she scolded. "Do you really think, on a battlefield, when your comrades are lying around you with their intestines falling out and their arms ripped off and their chests torn open, that you can just ask them to get an injury on a spot that _doesn't make you uncomfortable to touch?_"

She had a point, but this was just practice, wasn't it?

Had she really just _smacked his head?_

"You're telling me that if someone sliced my _femoral artery,_" Sakura snapped at him, seizing his hand and smacking it against her inner thigh and holding it there, ignoring his scandalized expression, "and I was bleeding out and had maybe a minute to live, you would stand back and let me die just because this is a _little too close to my vagina?_"

"'Course not!" Sasuke argued angrily, blushing even harder.

"And why not?" she demanded.

"Because I wouldn't have let you get cut there to begin with. Stupid."

This had all seemed like such a good idea this morning. Learn a quick healing lesson with Sakura, add yet another weapon to his astounding arsenal. If he could heal himself on the battlefield, he would be nigh immortal.

But all he seemed to be able to do was tear cuts deeper and offend the medic teaching him.

"You won't be able to stop every attack in the world, Sasuke-kun," Sakura said harshly. "You think this is too uncomfortable? Fine, we'll play your way."

And before he could stop her, she took her kunai and stabbed it _hard_ into the spot on her thigh she'd described as her femoral artery.

Sasuke's jaw dropped open in shock, and he was on his feet in a second, Sharingan locked on the terrifying amount of blood spilling from her wound.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he demanded. "Sakura, knock it off, heal yourself!"

"No," she said, breaths shallow as she attempted to focus through the pain. "You do it. I won't lift a _finger_ to heal myself. Now where I've cut…I've got about a minute before I bleed out. Focus on what I told you before. Change the nature of your chakra from hostile to healing, keep it loose, then refine it when you find the damaged cells."

"_Damaged cells? _I can _see_ the damaged cells, they're _all over the ground!_"

"Forty-five seconds," Sakura reminded him, turning pale as more blood continued to flow.

"You're insane! Sakura I can't do this, heal yourself, hurry up!"

"No. Heal me, Sasuke-kun. You know what you have to do. Forty seconds. Hurry, I'm going into shock."

Sasuke could tell that she was serious. And it really was exactly like Haruno Sakura to nearly kill herself for the sake of education.

All his previous (arousal) discomfort at being forced to touch a formerly-forbidden area of Sakura's body vanished in the heat of the moment. Sharingan activated, he took in the severity of the wound; she'd torn through the muscle and pierced the artery. He had to fix that first.

For a man whose entire life had been devoted to ensuring his chakra was as potent and harmful as it could possibly be, changing the nature of it now seemed like an insurmountable task. But if he couldn't do it, Sakura would bleed out and die right in front of him.

And that was unacceptable.

His intimidation at what he'd been tasked to do disappeared. It was fix her artery or watch her die. He had a job to do.

He crossed his palms and activated the Mystical Palm Technique, placing them over her damaged thigh and closing his eyes to work. His chakra was changing, no longer hostile like it was in battle; he knew it was nothing like the warm, soothing chakra Sakura used, but at least he wasn't shredding her skin further like on his last attempt.

"Good, Sasuke-kun," Sakura encouraged, her skin almost deathly white as she fought to remain conscious. "Close the artery. Don't be intimidated by the blood, don't waste time trying to heal the skin. That'll heal on its own. Close the artery and repair the muscle tissue."

There would be time later to freak out on Sakura for what she was making him do. For right now, all that mattered in the world was fixing her femoral artery. With concentration he was amazed he possessed, he molded his chakra – refined it, as Sakura had instructed – and forced it in a barrier around her artery.

He felt rather than saw the lining piece itself back together, slowing the blood flow.

Okay. Okay. The artery was closed now. She'd said to fix the muscle tissue. Personally he felt that the shredded skin was in more urgent need of attention, but she told him to ignore that. Just because it looked terrible on the surface didn't mean it was the most dangerous. If he fixed the skin, for example, without repairing the tissues underneath…

He shuddered. Okay. Muscle tissue first.

Sweat gathered on his brow – was it really this exhausting, being a medic-nin? – as he turned his attention to her muscle. It was tricky to negotiate the fibers back together, requiring more control than he thought he possessed, but time was of the essence here. By his estimation, Sakura wasn't out of the woods just yet.

A new, healthy respect for Sakura's ability was emerging, but he buried it under his fury that she'd do something stupid like _sever her femoral artery_ just to prove a point to him about the human body.

He'd be sure to beat her up for it later.

"Good, Sasuke-kun," Sakura said, and she didn't look quite so deathly anymore, smiling at him. "Nice and easy. It's like sewing."

_Sewing,_ he thought, wanting to scoff in her face but afraid doing so would cause him to rip her leg off. _SEWING. Fucking crazy girl._

"Finish it, Sakura," he ordered, feeling his chakra falter in exhaustion. One healing session and he was down for the count.

This time, she obeyed, knocking his hands away from her wound. Astonished that she possessed any energy at _all_ after sustaining an injury like that, Sasuke watched as she skillfully, effortlessly finished stitching her muscle tissue back together, then did the same thing to her skin.

Besides the shocking red blood on her leg and the grass under her and all over his hands, you would never know she'd been about ten seconds from death.

Sasuke fell back on his ass, breathing heavily, adrenaline coursing through his veins in place of his wasted chakra. He lifted his arm – it felt heavier than usual – to wipe the sweat off his forehead, stunned at what had just happened.

Then, the anger.

"ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?" he shouted, even though he almost never raised his voice to her. "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

Sakura looked back serenely, as though nothing had happened. "What?"

"_What?!_ You fucking _psychopath_!"

"Oh, come on, Sasuke-kun, it worked, didn't it? You _fixed a femoral artery._ There are students in my advanced class that can't fix a wound like that."

"_You could have died, you moron!_"

Sakura rolled her eyes. "I'm a kunoichi. I almost die every day. This was nothing. Oh, damn, this is never gonna come out of this skirt…"

"I'm done with this," Sasuke snapped. "You're insane."

"Oh, knock it off, Sasuke-kun!" she snapped back, losing her infamous temper at last. "How do you think _I _learned? I had the _Hokage_ take a knife and slice her carotid artery. And she told me beforehand that if I didn't fix it, she'd die and the Council would think that I killed her and I'd be executed as a traitor. And I was _13._ Stop being such a baby."

Sasuke pictured the scene with shocking ease. It _was_ the kind of insane thing Tsunade-sama would do, and it made sense that like everything else – chakra-enhanced strength, superb healing jutsu, even the _yin _seal – she would pass it on to her favorite student.

"The point is," Sakura huffed, and then she smiled in so disarming a way that he forgot about his anger, "you saved me. And now, you know how to save yourself on the battlefield. If it ever comes to that, of course, which it won't."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Because I'll be with you the whole time," she explained with a shrug. "And fixing people is for me to worry about."

Sasuke smirked against his will, laying back on the grass, letting the breeze soothe his heated muscles. "So I can't say that I won't ever let you get hurt, but you can say you'll never let me fix myself?"

Sakura giggled and laid back beside him, their arms touching, the bloody evidence of their gruesome activity drying on the grass beneath them.

"All life is a double standard, Sasuke-kun. Never forget that. But _wait_ until I tell _Naruto_ that _Uchiha Sasuke_ almost let a teammate bleed out because he was _afraid to touch her legs._"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed, and maybe it was the chakra depletion, because what he said in response was this:

"Maybe I fixed your fucking legs because I have _plans_ for them later on."

And he was rewarded with _Sakura_ losing her cool, and _Sakura _blushing like an idiot, and _Sakura_ unable to focus on anything around them.

And Sasuke was forced to agree with her. All life is a double standard.

But there was nothing he did better than revenge.

He smirked. They'd both learned a little something today.

* * *

**note..** i'm going to attempt to do every prompt for sasusaku month because of my neuroses. love you.

xoxo daisy:)


	3. normal, or something like it

**day 3. prompt: watching**

* * *

Sasuke was such a special boy – such an _exception_ – that it never occurred to Sakura that he might actually enjoy _normal_ things.

In her defense, he'd spent most of his life galvanized for a murderous cause; from the second they'd introduced themselves as members of Team 7, Sakura knew that Sasuke didn't want the same things as the rest of them. His entire world was devoted to avenging his family and killing his brother (things, of course, she didn't learn until later.)

She'd gotten used to Special Sasuke. Special Sasuke who spent hours training long after his classmates had gone home; Special Sasuke who was more focused on practicing his fire jutsu than playing with friends at the park; Special Sasuke who avoided village festivals like the plague and invested his meager mission pay in new weaponry.

And then he'd left Konoha, and Sakura had gotten used to Special Sasuke in the bingo book, and Special Sasuke attacking Konoha, and Special Sasuke joining the war effort last minute in time to save everybody and becoming _Heroic Sasuke…_

Normal Sasuke had never seemed like a possibility.

Then she saw his bedroom.

* * *

It was a quiet night, the night she was forced to reevaluate her opinion of Uchiha Sasuke. The pair of them had finished a rather difficult two-man recon mission in Iwa; things had gone unusually wrong and they found themselves limping back home on each other's shoulders.

Being dragged into a difficult fight with a number of enemy shinobi, Sakura had been forced to use up a lot of chakra, chakra she might normally have expended healing herself and Sasuke. As such, she'd had just enough to make sure their wounds weren't fatal, and now she was maxed out. When the gleaming gates of Konoha came into view, she'd never been happier to be home. All she wanted to do was lay down on her bed and sleep.

The problem was, Sakura lived on the opposite side of the village as Sasuke.

"Here's your stop," she said with a tired smile, pausing at the corner of the street where his apartment building was located. "Go home, bandage up your ribs. I'll see you tomorrow, we have to give the mission report to Tsunade-shishou first thing."

Sasuke would normally nod his goodbye and turn his back on her, slouching his way home in his typical Special Heroic Sasuke way. But tonight, he merely shook his head and continued towards his apartment, still supporting a wounded Sakura on his shoulder.

"Your apartment's too far," he said quietly, by way of explanation. "And you're hurt and I don't have the energy to walk you home."

Sakura blinked, surprised at his chivalry but not really so, because in his own way, Sasuke had always been very protective of her. Sometimes he was pushy about it, and insufferable and sexist and mysoginistic, and…

But it had always been in his nature to look out for her.

The idea, though, of spending the night at _Uchiha Sasuke's_ apartment was shocking. Yes, she could say that they'd become friends again after the war and yes, she could say that her feelings for him were as potent as they'd ever been, tempered by maturity and confidence in a way they hadn't been as a wild, feral child. Yes, she could even say that sometimes she suspected that Sasuke might be nursing a crush of his own.

But this? Spending the night together, and not on a dirty forest floor in the middle of a foreign country on a _mission?_

She felt herself blush as they continued their slow, loping pace down the still-busy street. Suddenly she resented what she'd always loved about Konoha – that even at night, everyone was still active, the streets were still lively, the lights were still on. They drew attention everywhere, curious glances from inquisitive villagers who wanted to know why Uchiha Sasuke was heading home with a battered, bruised, exhausted Haruno Sakura on his arm.

"It's fine, really," she insisted, disliking the attention she once craved. "Here, you just go lay down, I'm gonna head home."

"Shut up, Sakura." Still, he kept them moving, and her temper flared.

"I'm not some weak little girl, I'm a _kunoichi_ and we're in _Konoha._ My apartment is…"

"Too far away from here," he said flatly. "Stop talking. My head hurts. You're making it worse."

Seeing the futility in her argument, Sakura shut her mouth and let him lead them both to his place. Besides, part of her was very curious; she'd been inside his apartment once or twice before, usually before a mission to summon him or to drop off some groceries if she'd bought too much, but never had she looked inside his bedroom.

And part of her was hoping to catch a glimpse of Uchiha Sasuke's inner sanctuary.

He was special, after all, she realized, as they made it to his building. Most likely he had some type of high security established around the perimeter of his apartment, accessible only through some complicated seal, or perhaps an eye-recognition panel…

Sakura watched with bated breath, waiting for Sasuke to activate his Sharingan or slice open his hand for a blood recognition board to admit them inside.

Instead, she was slightly wrongfooted as Sasuke fumbled in his pocket for a housekey, inserted it into the lock, struggled a bit before the tumblers clicked, then opened the door.

Well, that was sort of a normal thing to do.

_So I guess even Special Sasuke fumbles with his keys like the rest of us,_ she thought, somewhat surprised, but a little bit charmed. For as special as Sasuke was, she liked the idea that he did normal things every now and then.

His apartment smelled a bit musty, but she guessed hers did as well; they'd been gone on their mission for two weeks, and Sasuke lived alone. There was no one to take care of the place while he was out, discounting Naruto, if he ever felt like crashing on the sofa. (He was thoroughly unwelcome, but Sakura knew he snuck in here sometimes anyway to raid Sasuke's fridge.)

Sasuke helped her inside and they kicked off their sandals at the door before he nodded to the sofa.

"Go 'head, sit down," he muttered. She guessed he didn't have much experience entertaining guests, so she merely shook her head.

"No way, I'm all bloody," she said, gesturing to her stained ANBU uniform. "I'll ruin your couch."

Sasuke blinked and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Shower's down the hall."

_Shower?_ Sakura thought, surprised yet again. With all the clan money Sasuke had inherited, she would have guessed he would have purchased some expensive, exclusive hot spring-onsen-type set-up and had it installed behind the building for his personal use. Having something as conventional as a shower took her off-guard.

Had she built Sasuke up in her head to be something he wasn't?

Thankfully, she had a change of clean clothes in her mission pack, and while she might normally politely decline the use of someone else's shower to avoid being an imposition, the idea of hot water in her filthy hair was way too tempting to pass up.

"Oh. Okay. Um, thank you. I'll be ten minutes. Thanks, Sasuke-kun."

It was definitely awkward, she realized, ducking around him with her mission pack to the shower. She'd never been alone with him in his apartment – Naruto or Sai had always been there as a buffer to the disconcerting tension that liked to settle between them – and the fact that it was now two in the morning, and she was using his _shower…_

The intimacy of the situation was not lost on her, and she felt herself fiercely blushing as she found his bathroom.

Shutting herself inside – and locking it, because she was nervous – she exhaled sharply and focused on her surroundings.

The bathroom was very…

For lack of a better word…

Normal.

Typical white walls, a white sink, toilet, and bathtub. Sasuke kept it reasonably clean – as clean as any 18-year-old guy kept anything – and a quick peek in the adjoining closet confirmed the presence of no less than four terrycloth towels and a number of washcloths.

Unable to help herself, Sakura chanced a glance inside the cabinet behind the small rectangular mirror above the sink, and found a toothbrush, a tube of the same toothpaste that she used at her own apartment, a bottle of mouthwash – no wonder he smelled so good all the time – a razor and a can of generic shaving cream.

_He buys generic?_ she thought, amused as she closed the mirror again. _Looks like I don't know him half as well as I think I do._

So far, in her five-second foray into Uchiha Sasuke's private quarters, she'd found nothing to suggest he was _special._ There were no secret passageways, no hidden weapons stores; he didn't live on an ancient burial ground.

In fact, his apartment wasn't all that different from Kiba's, or Chouji's, or hers. Very normal. Very…

A stinging pain in her side arrested her attention, and she winced as she remembered her injuries. Nothing fatal, of course, but definitely uncomfortable. She tore her thoughts away from how normal Sasuke really was, and lifted her shirt to examine the wound.

She'd caught the business end of a windmill shuriken during the fight earlier; the one who'd gotten the lucky blow in had received decidedly more courtesy of her full-powered uppercut to the jaw, but she still resented the fact that she'd been caught off-guard. Prick. The wound was shallow now that she'd healed most of it, but dirt had collected in and around it on the journey home. She needed to clean it.

_Stop focusing on Sasuke-kun,_ she thought irritably, annoyed with herself at being so affected by his normalcy. _Get in the shower before you get an infection. Worry about all this later._

Sakura stripped off her clothes and momentarily marveled at the sensation of being naked in Uchiha Sasuke's bathroom before turning on the faucet in the bathtub. The water ran cold at first, then gradually grew hotter before she turned on the showerhead.

She sighed in relaxation as she stepped under the steaming spray, the heat soothing her aching muscles. Unappetizingly, the water ran pink with blood for a few moments as she let the water rinse her; when it stopped, she deemed it safe to wash her hair and body.

Shockingly, Sasuke possessed three bottles of shower supplies: shampoo, conditioner (_conditioner!) _and body wash. She knew for a fact he used unscented soap on missions, but here in the village, it appeared he had a preference. Generic, again.

Really, stripped of its pomp and frills, Sasuke's apartment was pretty much as _normal_ as it got. And the more Sakura saw, the more she liked.

Granted, he could benefit from a woman's touch – she liked the smell of the shampoo and conditioner, but she would have preferred something a bit more feminine – but it wasn't the dark cave she'd been expecting.

But luxuriating in the shower for so long was rude, especially because she was using so much hot water and he probably wanted a shower of his own. She finished quickly to conserve water, dried herself off on one of his towels, and dressed swiftly in a tank top and shorts, all she had left in her mission pack.

Blushing at the fact that she was now about to sleep over at Sasuke-kun's apartment with no underwear, she brushed her teeth quickly and collected some bandages from her bag before leaving the bathroom in a cloud of steam.

Sasuke met her in the hallway, already shirtless with a change of clothes slung over his shoulder.

"I'm showering now," he said needlessly, while she blushed deeper at the display of his rock-hard abs in the dim light of the hall. Casually he sidestepped her and swept inside the steamy room she'd just vacated.

_You've seen him shirtless before,_ she thought harshly. _Just because you're in his house wearing no underwear after midnight doesn't mean this is any different than when he takes off his shirt to train at the grounds and the sun hits him and I want to lick his muscles and…_

This was getting ridiculous. Special Sasuke seemed to be reserved for the battlefield, and she was now in Normal Sasuke's apartment because she was too tired and too injured to make it to her place. She needed to focus on patching up her wounds and getting some rest, not on the half-naked state of her teammate and her own obvious arousal.

Sasuke hadn't instructed her to go back to the living room, but it seemed like the most polite thing to do, as an unannounced guest. She knew he wouldn't want her rummaging around in the other rooms, so she would have to fix herself up in the living room and sleep on the sofa.

But as she wandered down the hallway back the way she'd come, she couldn't help but notice that she passed Sasuke's room…

And his door was ajar.

Licking her lips, she wondered what he would do if he caught her sneaking a peek.

_I'm not creepy,_ she convinced herself firmly. _This isn't creepy. This is in the interest of science. Or friendship, or whatever. So far, Sasuke-kun seems like such a normal person. Living room, bathroom, keys, all of it is normal. Maybe there's something in his room that…_

Sakura had to be honest with herself. The more she saw of Sasuke's place, the more she liked it.

She liked the idea that Special Sasuke existed only in battle, and that any other time, he was just another 18-year-old boy. She liked the idea that no other girl knew about his double life as an Average Joe. She liked the fact that he'd brought her home with him, exposed her to his inner sanctuary, the place he could really be himself.

She wanted to know that that normalcy wasn't a farce.

What if there was something in his bedroom that contradicted her new theory?

What if he really did have a secret weapons stash, or some kind of portal to another dimension? What if he was hiding an ancient library full of secret Uchiha clan jutsu, or a laboratory where he conducted human experiments? He _had_ to have learned _something_ from Kabuto back then…

Or maybe something more innocuous, like a weight-lifting machine. Targets around his bed where he practiced weapons-throwing in his sleep. Something to suggest he wasn't the normal boy she was starting to really, truly fall for.

_Just a peek,_ she told herself. _Then you can see if he's Special Sasuke all the time, or if that's just during work hours._

She secretly hoped it was.

She heard the shower kick on and realized this was her chance. She might never get an opportunity like this again, and this was too good to pass up.

Quietly, stealthily, invoking all her training as a ninja, she slipped back the hall and inside his bedroom.

What she saw nearly took her breath away.

There were no booby traps set up to ward off unwanted intruders. There were no target dummies or test tubes or experiments.

There was a bed, and a comfortable-looking blanket, and a bookshelf, and a dresser, and a _TV._

Yes, there were weapons strewn here and there, but there were weapons in her bedroom, too. She liked to polish her kunai at night when she couldn't sleep, and it was never remiss for a shinobi to sleep without a knife accessible. But beyond that, it was a normal bedroom.

With a _TV._

She knew it was outlandish to expect that a guy didn't own a TV. They lived in modern times, after all.

But there was something just _outrageous_ about seeing one propped innocuously on Sasuke's bookshelf, facing his bed, that kind of stole her breath away.

He watched TV. And he probably did it before he went to sleep.

Such a normal, _normal _thing to do.

Hesitating only for a moment, she sat down on his bed and glanced around for a remote. He had it on his side table, most likely for easy access. Suddenly, it was nothing at all to picture her sullen, brooding teammate falling asleep in front of a movie, one leg outstretched, one knee bent, arms above his head, then right before dozing off, tossing the remote on the side table.

It would have been almost laughably impossible to picture such a scenario before this, but now seeing the evidence herself, how could she had ever thought Sasuke-kun wasn't as normal as the other boys?

Smiling, she turned the TV on.

It was the new Yukie Fujikaze TV movie she'd heard about, but hadn't seen. Picturing Sasuke watching this before bed, her smile broadened as she began wrapping up her swollen ankle.

_This must be Sasuke-kun's routine,_ she thought, spying a first aid kit next to an alarm clock on the other bedside table. _Maybe he does this exact thing after every mission. Showers and tapes himself up in bed, and falls asleep with the TV on._

The thought was so pleasantly domestic that she almost wanted to cry.

Special Sasuke was great, of course, but she liked Normal Sasuke a million times more. Normal Sasuke who took her home when she was hurt, fumbled with his keys, offered her his shower and bought generic. Normal Sasuke who watched TV like a proper teenager and ignored the alarm clock.

How could she have thought he was anything but a normal guy? The more she thought about it, the more ridiculous she realized she'd been.

"You're gonna get blood on my sheets," a deep voice rumbled from the doorway, and she flinched.

"Oh, Sasuke-kun!" Busted. Either he took miraculously short showers, or she'd been daydreaming longer than she thought. "Sorry…I just…saw there was a TV in your room, and…"

"Never saw a TV before?" he quipped, but instead of kicking her out of his room like she'd been expecting, he merely dropped onto the bed beside her and took the bandages out of her hands, presumably to bind up his ribs. He'd taken a volley of ruthless punches in the scuffle.

"Here," she said, deciding not to make things anymore awkward than she already had with her ridiculous expectations. "You finish my ankle, I'll get your ribs for you."

Sasuke nodded – ribs were a bitch to bind without help – and continued wrapping up Sakura's ankle. She winced a little, but the shower had helped so much that the staggering pain she'd felt on the way to Sasuke's was little more than a nuisance now. She was drowsy, disarmed by Sasuke's presence, and would like nothing more than to fall asleep watching TV.

"Can I tell you a secret?" she asked, as he taped off the end to an impressive ankle wrap.

"Like I could stop you," he muttered, but she knew him well enough to know that if he was truly annoyed, he'd've kicked her out by now.

"Your room…is _completely_ not what I was expecting. I mean Sasuke-kun, you have a _TV._"

Sasuke, wet hair and _still_ shirtless and as gorgeous as the day was long, looked at her like she was crazy.

"So what. You were expecting that I wouldn't?"

"You always act like you're so above it all," she giggled, tearing off a decent-sized section of Ace bandage and propping herself up on her knees to work on his chest. "That all you ever do is train and work and train and work and sleep. It's just…really nice to see that you're a normal guy, too."

"Irritating," he commented needlessly, but she just laughed and wrapped him up.

For a few minutes, it was quiet except for the hushed blare of the movie on TV. Sasuke said nothing as Sakura worked, keeping his eyes on the screen kind of aimlessly. The room was dark and his face was illuminated by the TV light, and she fell just a bit more in love with him in that minute than ever before.

A regular guy, her Sasuke-kun, underneath all that sparkle.

"I always watch TV before I go to sleep," she revealed. "When I'm at home, anyway. I need noise to fall asleep. I'm weird like that."

"Always wondered how you could sleep through the dobe's constant talking," Sasuke murmured.

Ah, the _jokester._ Yet another side to Normal Sasuke she just couldn't help but like. Sasuke with a sense of humor.

When she was done, she knew her welcome had been outworn. Sasuke was exhausted, and he was wounded like she was. He needed some sleep, not to listen to the inane prattlings of a girl who thought he slept with corpses in his closet.

"I'm gonna get to sleep," she said with a smile. "Thanks for letting me crash here, I promise I won't make this a habit."

She made to stand, but Sasuke stopped her, a strong hand closing around her wrist and pulling her back down on the bed. He ignored her fierce blush and said quietly, "This is a good movie."

Wide, shocked eyes crinkled up with her dazzling smile, as she realized this was, for Sasuke, a milestone reached. A corner turned. A new chapter beginning.

With renewed confidence that maybe her welcome wasn't so worn out after all, she settled back into Sasuke's four pillows – trying not to squeal at the way he casually threw an arm around her shoulders before laying back himself – and fell asleep the way a million girls before her had.

Watching TV with a normal boy in his normal apartment on a not-so-normal night.

* * *

**note..** having such a great, great time with sasusaku month, how 'bout you guys? thanks for supporting the shit out of me with this and for keeping your critiques to yourself, since y'alls know i ain't into that shit ;) i love you and i hope you love this story.

see you tomorrow! ;)

xoxo daisy :)

(phillies, y'all.)


	4. contenders and casualties

**day 4. prompt: misspent youth.**

* * *

In the battle for Haruno Sakura-san's heart, there are contenders, and there are casualties.

Lee wonders now, looking back on all of it, if he had ever really had a chance.

It's not typically in his nature to reflect on past mistakes. It's the height of youthful solidity to learn from the past, not wallow in it. But heartbreak has a way of reshuffling one's priorities.

And he wonders why he never read the signs.

…

Lee remembers the first day he ever saw her. Incidentally, it is also the first day he knew what it was like to contain a heart that beat for someone else. It is also the first day he knew what it was like to go through life half-whole and longing.

She's in a younger class. He sees her by an accident that really isn't an accident, because she has hair the color of flowers and she reminds him of the lotus blossom and that's important. Small and fragile-looking, more waifish than the rock-solid kunoichi she's training to become in a few years. Seven years old, Lee is, when his heart is stolen from him by a little girl reading a thick scroll underneath a cherry blossom tree.

He remembers the way his throat seized up and his stomach started to ache and he remembers the sweat, even though it wasn't even hot that day. A balmy spring afternoon, it was, when Lee fell desperately, egregiously, madly in love with a little girl with pink bangs and little white hands.

He remembers approaching her as if to say something, then, uncharacteristically, choking on his words. And what is that, anyway? Rock Lee has courage of conviction; he stands by what he says and means, so he always declares things in clear, ringing tones so no one misunderstands him.

But one look at a little girl – he doesn't know her name until he asks around – and his tongue is in knots and he's too intimidated to even say hello.

Lee remembers doing 600 sit-ups that night in punishment for his own cowardice.

…

Lee remembers the first day he ever spoke to her.

The Chunin exams (his first shot at them, anyway), and she is radiant in red, flanked by her odd teammates and looking beautifully unsure.

Perhaps – in hindsight – he came on a bit strong.

Really, openly declaring his intent to become her boyfriend, when she had previously never even _met_ him…Lee, at 22 and a bit more world-wise than he used to be, realizes that maybe that hadn't been the best approach.

But at the time, the most important thing in the world had been to proudly broadcast his desire for Sakura-san, compliment her peerless beauty, and woo her into an exciting ninja relationship in which he would never allow any harm to befall her. Really, what woman could resist that, and…

The disgust on her face spoke volumes, but Lee remembers that with fondness. His Sakura-san, spunky and feisty and _head over heels for someone else_, would not be commandeered by pretty words and declarations, no matter how meaningful. And Lee loved a challenge more than anything else.

Still does.

(But the difference between Rock Lee at age 13 and Rock Lee at age 22 is that he knows a lost cause when he sees one.)

…

Lee remembers that there were ulterior motives for his challenging Uchiha Sasuke right off the bat.

Physically, he has trained to perfect his taijutsu. Lee is hopeless with nin- and genjutsu but thanks to the magnificent, glorious, youthful tutelage of his jounin teacher Gai-sensei, he knows that he has taijutsu nearly entirely mastered. A few thousand sit-ups and a couple hundred leg presses and weights on his ankles that strengthen his legs and his _speed…_

He knows he is a force to be reckoned with, even for a lucky genius like Uchiha Sasuke. Uchiha Sasuke, who was born into a life of skill of privilege, with a kekkei genkai he did not earn through countless hours of hard work that gives him an instant edge, with a spot on Team 7 beside the beautiful Haruno Sakura-san that he did not appreciate.

He wants to prove himself to the world, and he wants to prove himself to Uchiha Sasuke. That hard work will win out, and the flame of youth cannot be extinguished and the lotus will bloom and…

…Lee remembers that he wanted to impress Sakura-san. Right off the bat and immediately, he wanted to prove to her that he was better.

In Uchiha Sasuke, he has identified not only a shinobi rival, but a rival in the quest for Sakura-san's heart. He doubts that Sasuke is aware of his status as Lee's newest obstacle, or that he much cares; like Neji, he is arrogant and considers Lee beneath him. He doubts that Sasuke so much as notices that he holds Sakura-san's delicate heart in his hands, and what a gorgeous gift that really is.

Not even when he has his ass handed to him by someone who scores consistent 1's in Ninjutsu and Genjutsu.

Lee knows the Chunin exams are about proving one's mettle and earning the right to move forward.

But they are also an opportunity to win the heart of his lady fair. And Lee loves Sakura-san, so that becomes his goal.

Lee remembers this to be the decision that changed (ruined) his life.

…

Lee remembers the first time he had a conversation with Sakura-san.

He is honest, so he can't count his declaration of love as a real conversation. No, this one happens when he is in the hospital after the Chunin exams, recovering from a risky but successful operation that will restore his ability to become a splendid shinobi.

Sakura-san is training to become a medic-nin under Tsunade-sama, the legendary medic who has given him this second chance at a promising shinobi career. Her chakra control is dazzling and Lee is not the type to be envious of anything; instead, he celebrates her skill and looks forward to her turn in the nurse's rotation, because she changes his bandages with a smile that holds none of the disgust of their first encounter.

He remembers it was early morning and he was supposed to be sleeping, when Sakura-san slips inside his hospital room. He snaps to attention because a lady is present, and greets her with a hearty, "Good morning, Sakura-san! You are looking even more youthful and beautiful than you were yesterday! How are you?"

Sakura-san smiles and tucks short hair behind her ear (the new haircut looks beautiful on her, as does everything, and his heart sings for her) and takes a seat beside his bed so she can change his bandages.

"Very well, thank you," she says warmly. Sakura-san is nothing but kind, and hearing her lilting voice responding to his queries, Lee feels well enough to drive his fist through three hundred cement blocks all in the name of young love. "How 'bout you, Lee-san?"

Lee-san. _Lee-san._ He could kick down a mountain right now if she asked him to.

His joy at actually _conversing_ with Sakura-san renders him incoherent. It's only when he notices the sadness in her glimmering eyes that he stops himself.

"Something bothers you, Sakura-san! Please, tell me and I swear on the power of eternal youth that I will chase it away!"

Sakura-san shakes her head and giggles sadly, delicate hands touching his skin as she works. "I don't think there's anything you can do, Lee-san. But thank you."

He does not hesitate. He will try again. He will try and work until Sakura-san opens up to him.

"The dazzling Sakura-san must never lose the radiant joy in her eyes," he declares. "And…"

"Shikamaru's team came back," she reveals, not needing to hear the rest. Lee remembers how her head bowed when she said that. "They…they failed. They almost _died._ And…and Sasuke-kun..."

Tears fill her eyes and Lee feels her pain in his soul. It's tempered by his own agony as well, because here is evidence that Lee's battle for Sakura-san's heart is an uphill one.

Because this beautiful, dazzling, luminous little girl is already in love. And it's not with him.

"I'm sorry, Lee-san," Sakura-san quickly apologizes, shaking off her tears. "You don't need to hear about this. Your arm's healing nicely; your leg's gonna take some time but Tsunade-shishou's the best, she'll have you splitting bricks and kicking boulders in no time!"

In her false smile, Lee sees an opportunity. He remembers it now, remembers the window, remembers her vulnerability and his opportunity.

"As the Beautiful Green Beast of Konoha," he declares from his hospital bed, "I solemnly decree that I shall love you until the end of time and far beyond! Do not let the selfish actions of Uchiha Sasuke-san allow the light in your eyes to diminish! I have loved you since I first saw you, and…"

"Lee-san." Sakura-san's voice is kind, but very firm. She meets his eyes and there's a sternness in them he hasn't quite adjusted to, and it takes him off-guard. "You don't even _know_ me."

He freezes. She is mistaken. Of course he knows her. Her name is Haruno Sakura-san. She was born March 28 thirteen years ago. She has pink hair and green eyes and…

"I made that mistake, too," she says quietly, looking out the window at something Lee can't see. "I told myself I loved someone for all the wrong reasons. I didn't even really know him at the beginning, Lee-san. I told myself I did, and before I even really ever spoke with him, I was fighting with my best friend over him. Thinking I knew him.

"I made that mistake. And then slowly, little by little, I found out that I _did_ know him. And then I was really stuck. That's when I knew I was really in love with him."

She sighs and looks up at him again. "Don't make that mistake, Lee-san. When you tell yourself you love someone, make sure you really mean it."

With that, she leaves him alone in his hospital room. And Lee remembers vowing to himself that he would learn everything there was to know about Haruno Sakura-san, because once she saw how willing he was to absorb her, surely she would reciprocate his love.

Lee wonders now if he should have just taken her advice, and left the whole thing alone.

…

Lee remembers the days, weeks, months, and years that followed, when it seemed like he had a chance.

Abandoned by teammates who left to pursue power, Sakura-san is left in the village to fend for herself.

She is trained by Tsunade-shishou (something that truly rankles his teammate Tenten), and becoming as beautiful and strong as he always knew she would be. And now that she doesn't have an official team of her own, she accompanies Team Gai on many missions.

And he becomes friends with her.

On their travels, he learns that she hates spicy food and thinks she doesn't look pretty in blue. He learns that she plays trivia games for fun and stresses out about her forehead. He learns that her father is a genin and her parents don't understand her.

The more he learns, the deeper he falls. And when she's with him, it's easy to forget that there's a shinobi out there in the world who already has her heart captive.

It's easy to pretend that winning her love isn't a lost cause.

…

Lee remembers that Naruto loves her, too. He is a contender.

It's a poorly-kept secret, Naruto's loud and obnoxious devotion to Sakura-san. He's liked her since they were children, has received her disgust just as Lee has, and now, 15 and returned to Konoha, Lee knows he loves her.

This makes him competition.

His previous competitor, Uchiha Sasuke, has not been seen or heard from in years. Lee knows it is a mistake to assume that means he has left Sakura-san's heart just as easily as he left the village, but he hopes anyway, because he's been working hard for her.

Naruto throws a wrench into his plans.

He has to compete with not one but two of her teammates, and Naruto's return has taken up all of Sakura-san's time. She has been training in taijutsu with Lee over the years and they have become closer; she trusts him and seeks out his company and they are friends. Perhaps they will become something more, with more time, but here comes Naruto.

She spends time with him. Fusses over him. Yells at him. Missions and ramen and he takes up all her time.

And if she's this worked up about Naruto coming home…

How will she be when they finally retrieve Sasuke-san?

…

Lee remembers when he knew the battle was lost.

It's something he's never really admitted before: defeat. Total and utter defeat. It's not youthful to concede when there's still a chance at victory.

But he knows now there isn't.

His one shred of hope was that perhaps Uchiha Sasuke, in his eternal selfishness, would not return Sakura-san's affections.

He is proven wrong.

Lee remembers the night was quiet, when his world came crashing down around him. The war is over, and it's the last night before everyone heads back home. Shinobi he would have once considered enemies nod and smile at him as they find each other again; enemies from Iwa and Ame and everywhere else are now allies, and he hopes this will last.

On the battlefield, she saved Gai-sensei. Lee resolves that this is the time. He cannot waste anymore. She is everything every woman has aspired to be since the dawn of time, and he must tell her. He must confess his undying love – real and true this time, because now he knows her – and win her heart; Neji's death and this terrible war have shown him that youth is a treasure and life is brief and dangerous.

No more time wasted.

He has worked hard. He was trained for this. He has earned Sakura-san's heart and now he will take it.

So he waits outside the medical tents. He knows she is inside Tent 3 patching up her wounded comrades, because he hears the lilting, lovely cadence of her voice soothing a patient as she stitches them back together. Beautiful and strong. They could not have won this war without her.

Lee meditates as he prepares for this moment. But his meditation is interrupted by the approach of slow, purposeful footsteps in the direction of Tent 3.

He cracks open his wide eyes and sees Uchiha Sasuke, battered like the rest of them, making his way to Sakura-san's tent. He has won Lee-san's trust in coming to save Konoha at the last minute, but something close to panic flares in his heart when he sees the younger, taller shinobi open the flap to Sakura-san's tent and step inside.

_Perhaps he is wounded and needs treatment,_ Lee thinks, unable to resist the temptation of listening in.

"…Sakura."

He makes out Sasuke-san's deep voice, and notes that he calls Sakura-san just her name. The level of familiarity this indicates makes him uncomfortable. All this time he's spent apart from her…does he really think he has the right to say her name like that?

"Sasuke-kun, what're you doing here? Are you hurt? I thought I healed you on the battlefield."

"I'm fine. Naruto thinks I should talk to you."

Sakura-san's voice becomes chilling. "Since when do you listen to Naruto?"

"I don't."

"So why are you here, then? I don't have anything more to say to you."

There is a pause, and then a rustling of clothes, and Lee presses his face against the crack in the opening of the tent and to his shock, to his horror, he sees Sasuke standing with one arm wound around Sakura-san's waist, holding her tight against him.

Sakura-san is frozen, eyes wide, apparently stunned at the gesture, and Sasuke just stands there with his head buried in her hair, breathing normally.

Lee doesn't need to see anymore. He can't.

Lee remembers little about the rest of that night, besides the agony in his stomach. He knows he retreated, unwilling to see the inevitable moment when Sakura-san relaxed into Sasuke's embrace, unable to stomach witnessing the imminent, long-awaited kiss that would take place between Sakura-san and the man she'd never given up on.

Lee remembers that tears wouldn't come, maybe because this went beyond tears. Maybe this bone-deep, gut-wrenching heartache was just…too much. And tears wouldn't do it justice.

Lee remembers catching a glimpse of Naruto as he left the medical tents. Naruto, who was watching the tent with a smile on his face that didn't reach his eyes.

Contenders, and casualties.

…

Now, Lee is 22. Now, Lee is Sakura-san's friend and Sasuke-san's, too.

But still it hurts to watch them marry.

Sasuke-san will treat Sakura-san right. He has not discarded her delicate heart; he has merely kept it safe with him on his travels. He will make a good husband for Sakura-san, because he truly loves her.

And what's more, is she truly loves him.

And Lee, as he watches the wedding with a smile that convinces everyone he's doing just fine, regrets.

He regrets that he refused to see the signs, register the warnings.

He regrets that he was warned time and time again by Sakura-san, reminded kindly and continually that while she appreciated his devotion, she simply couldn't return it.

He regrets that he applied his nindo to love, as though you could ever truly win someone's heart through sheer effort and force of will. He regrets this, more than anything.

Because a woman's heart can't be acquired through hard work alone. Sakura-san had formed a bond with Uchiha Sasuke long before she'd even heard of Rock Lee, and that he thought he could take her away from him just because he'd wished for it hard enough seems so pathetically wasteful nowadays.

He'd underestimated Uchiha Sasuke's role in her life, and it had cost him his heart.

And he will love her in silence, forever, and unrequited as that first day when she ducked a barrage of air kisses and turned him down flat. She had warned him.

He watches husband and wife kiss for the first time and wishes he had listened.

* * *

**note..** first time writing lee, i hope i did him justice. poor baby, he never had a chance :(

anyways, happy fourth america! if y'alls is at philly jam fest tonight, look for me. i'll be trying to convince my husband to let me have an affair with neyo.

xoxo daisy :)


	5. heteronormative

There weren't enough swearwords in any language to properly describe the way he was feeling right now.

He'd been through a lot of shit in his life. Real, hardcore, egregious _shit._ Family massacre shit. Village betrayal shit. A million close calls with death shit.

Somehow, though, he felt more rage, more contempt, for what was happening right now in his kitchen than anything else he'd ever experienced in the past. He couldn't properly remember the anger that had driven him to do the terrible things he'd done over the years, nor could he invoke any of the meditative states that had calmed him down.

No, this, _this_ was the thing that summarily pissed him off beyond any other thing in the universe.

His busted – _fucking_ – kitchen pipes.

…

It was beyond a bruised ego, really. This was a direct hit on Sasuke's masculinity.

He and Sakura were barely a week into their new house when all that came crashing down around him. They'd built themselves a small, three-bedroom house near the river – the perfect size for raising a family somewhere down the road, when they were ready to become parents – and had since settled into comfortably domestic roles of which he felt his parents might have approved.

Which meant Sakura cooked and cleaned, and Sasuke took care of the repairs.

They'd never really discussed their roles. Sasuke hadn't felt the need to. Growing up, he'd learned that the man handled odd jobs around the house – mowing the lawn, taking out the garbage, things that required muscle – and the woman did the dishes and the laundry and the dusting. So far, he hadn't received any complaints from Sakura, and she was easily the type to voice her complaints if she had any.

It worked well for them so far. Coming home from missions, they took care of their respective ends of home maintenance. She made a delicious curry and had the dishes done immediately afterwards; he edged the lawn with the weed whacker and vacuumed up the dried, disconnected blades of grass to leave their house in sparkling condition.

…for a week.

And then the pipes happened.

Sakura was working at the hospital that morning, when everything went apefuck wrong in his life. Sasuke had woken up, showered, grabbed an apple since Sakura hadn't been around to make breakfast, and proceeded to wash off the gleaming red skin in the kitchen sink.

There was an ominous-sounding creak from underneath the sink, followed immediately by a trickle of water spilling from the cabinet and soaking the taupe kitchen linoleum.

"Shit," Sasuke swore, watching as his brand new kitchen was slowly flooded with crystal cold water. An inconvenience, for sure, but like any man, he saw in this an opportunity to assert his masculinity. A minor home repair issue that he could easily take care of himself, because he was a man and this was his house and that was his role in it.

He sprang immediately into action. Despite having no experience with fixing damaged pipes, he knew that this would be a task easily mastered with just a cursory examination. If he could summon a full-bodied Susanoo on barely any chakra with just enough time to save life as they knew it from his deranged relative, he could fix a fucking _pipe_ without any problems.

He nearly ripped the cabinet door off its hinges in his haste to reach the break. Sure enough, the piping underneath the sink was loose, and a leak in between the two connectors sent streams of water spurting onto the floor.

_Easy,_ he thought, smirking with masculine arrogance.

"I'll just get the tools," he said loudly, perfectly aware that no one was home, perfectly aware that Sakura wasn't around to hear it and be impressed by it, but like all men, he needed to assert his manhood with such statements as 'I'll get the tools' and 'I don't need to stop and ask for directions.' Liking the way his own confidence sounded resonating throughout their brand new house, he ran down to the basement, snatched his brand new (barely used) set of tools, and darted back up the stairs into his dampening kitchen.

_Just needs this nut tightened up,_ he thought, diagnosing the problem instantly. The smirk on his face wouldn't move as he knelt on the dry linoleum tiling, skillfully avoiding the growing puddle; there was simply nothing Uchiha Sasuke couldn't accomplish, whether it be saving the world or fixing a leaky sink pipe without any assistance. And wasn't Sakura a lucky girl, for landing a man so capable, and…

He'd no sooner touched the wrench to the loose nut than the tiny trickle of water became a full-on river, splashing him directly in the face and soaking his floor.

_Shit,_ he thought, falling backwards right on his ass in the puddle he'd been trying to avoid. _What the fuck happened?_

He'd gone to tighten up the nut and restore the connection, but something had gone terribly wrong, and now his kitchen was flooding, he was soaked through his clothes, and each passing second was a tremendous dig to his masculinity.

A voice, sounding suspiciously like Sakura's, called to him in the back of his mind, advising him to perhaps call a plumber, but he ignored it with ruthless enthusiasm.

_Hell no,_ he thought, determined. _I can fix this shit. I don't need a plumber comin' in here tellin' me how to take care of business. This is MY house._

...it was an hour of testing the wrench, giving himself manly pep talks, and avoiding the phone to call the plumber later that Sasuke realized he'd hit an all-new low in life.

Imagine. The great Uchiha Sasuke, brought down by a _leaky pipe._

This was terrible. This was the actual worst thing that had ever happened to him. No matter what he tried, nothing worked; his every effort to tighten up the loose nut and stop the flood of water in his kitchen only ended in egregious failure, each movement only worsening the situation.

And he was left soaking wet and stewing in his bruised pride.

_I'll flood this whole fucking house before I call a repairman,_ he thought, glaring at the pipes that threatened to take him down. _This just couldn't get any worse._

Then there was the sound of the door opening, and a breezy, "Sasuke-kun? I'm home!" and Sasuke actually gasped in horror.

_Shit. SHIT._

It was one thing to have a massive masculine breakdown in solitude; it was quite another to let his fiancee, the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his life and the woman who was counting on him to take care of her throughout the ages, bear witness to his complete and utter failure as a man. This was rock bottom. This was a new low.

Maybe if he moved fast enough, he could sneak behind her, knock her out, and wake her up after he'd taken care of business, and…

"Hey, I was thinking we'd go out for dinner tonight, and…oh. _Oh!_"

He winced. Busted.

Sakura appeared in the entrance to the kitchen, paused to take in the steadily-rising flood on her floor for the barest of moments, before she darted inside and knelt down beside him to look at the damaged pipes herself.

"It's no use," Sasuke muttered, pissed with himself for letting this happen. "It's broken beyond repair. We'll have to call in an expert, and…"

"Oh, I see what happened," Sakura interrupted, clearly not listening. "You tried to tighten the nut, but it broke. Here, gimme that wrench."

Awestruck – and deeply, deeply furious – Sasuke obeyed, and Sakura seized a new nut from his tool box before ducking underneath the sink.

Three seconds later – it was actually three seconds – the stream of water slowed to a trickle, then shut off completely.

"There!" said Sakura triumphantly, a smile on her soaking wet face as she emerged from the cabinet. "All fixed! I'll go get a mop, huh? We'll get this all cleaned up and then I'm thinking dinner at that new barbecue place?"

And she was on her feet again, flitting off to clean up the mess he'd caused, and Sasuke sat there on the floor, dripping wet and full of the soul-destroying knowledge that his fiancee had completely and utterly emasculated him.

A new low indeed.

…

The mess in the kitchen had been a _bitch_ to clean up, and the last thing in the world she felt like doing was _laundry,_ but things needed to be done, and Sakura resented going to sleep knowing there were chores still to be taken care of.

Sasuke had been quiet throughout dinner – unusually so – and his bad mood persisted on the way home from the restaurant. Two years of dating later and she'd finally learned to stop pestering about his moods. He always told her what was wrong when he was ready, and she couldn't fault him for wanting space on certain things because she was the same way.

They'd gotten home and he'd gone straight up to bed.

It was late now and she wanted nothing more than to join him, but with the pair of them leaving for missions in the morning – separately, she reminded herself with disappointment – and no clean, bloodless ANBU uniforms to wear, she'd been tasked with the responsibility of doing a load of laundry before she, too, could get some much-needed rest.

What a boring, unsatisfying chore, though.

They'd brought Sasuke's washer in to their new house, and it was still somewhat difficult for Sakura to figure out. Her washer had been old-fashioned and uncomplicated; Sasuke's had different settings, temperature adjustments, containers for fabric softener, and a million compartments she couldn't begin to understand, so she hadn't bothered to touch them.

Rather than ask Sasuke to explain the machine to her, however, she'd forged ahead and tried to teach herself on her own.

It would insult her femininity to admit that she didn't understand how to work a washing machine properly. And even if Sakura was a hardcore feminist and believed that women were inherently equal to men, she also knew that Sasuke needed looking after. Growing up in a traditionalist home, he desired the traditional male and female roles and if this was one way she could please him – by taking care of the laundry – then she would do it.

God knows Uchiha Sasuke needed a feminine influence in his life.

But her stubborn refusal to ask him for help left her in quite a tight spot.

When the buzzer rang, signaling the washing cycle was done and she could now make the transfer to the dryer, she opened the lid, and sucked in a sharp breath.

_Oh, fuck me._

Inside, their clothes floated on a full washing tank of soapy water.

The damn thing hadn't _drained._

Quickly troubleshooting the problem – and coming up short – she fished the sopping wet clothes out of the washer, soaking herself in the process for the second time that day, and set them on top of the dryer while she attempted to drain the water.

Oh, Sasuke would _kill_ her if she broke his washing machine! There must be a clog in it somewhere…maybe a pair of his stupid boxers had plugged up the hose or something, and…

"Sakura? The hell are you doing, it's almost two and you have a mission in the morning!"

She winced, then called back, "Uh, just…just doing some laundry, Sasuke-kun! I'll be there in a minute!"

_Just once I figure out how to get all this fucking water out! Maybe if I just get a closer look, I can see what the problem is…_

She lifted herself up over the machine, peering down into the sudsy water in search of the clog. It was difficult to see, however, and seeing as she didn't possess an omniscient Sharingan like her soon-to-be-husband, she rolled up her sleeve and plunged an arm into the machine to feel around for the plug.

But Sakura underestimated her own reach.

And accidentally submerged herself in the soapy water from the chest up.

_Get it together, idiot!_ she chastised herself, pulling herself back up and coughing sudsy water out of her lungs. _What the hell is wrong with you? Are you a kunoichi or not, slipping and falling in a goddamn washing machine?!_

"That can _wait,_" came Sasuke's irritated voice, getting louder as he approached the laundry room. "What are you…oh."

Eyes wide, thoroughly caught, drenched like a mad cat in the rain, she met her fiancee's inquisitive – amused – gaze and glared.

"It's…not what it looks like!" she said defensively, the first thing she could think of.

Sasuke merely raised an eyebrow before joining her in front of the machine.

"The damn thing won't drain," she said, embarrassed at her lack of domesticity. Really, what woman couldn't negotiate a _washing machine?_ Haruno Sakura, bested by _a home appliance?_

The very _notion._

Sasuke looked at the sudsy water in the machine – and all over his fiancee – then peered around behind it.

"There's a kink in the hose," he said simply, bending to adjust it. One flick of his wrist, and the water that had threatened to drown Sakura drained smoothly out of the machine into the plumbing.

She was relieved for about five seconds before remembering that she was supposed to be the woman of the house. Capable kunoichi, head medic, and Susie Homemaker rolled into one. This infernal machine had dared to challenge her femininity, and damn it, it had _succeeded._

What must Sasuke think of her? A 21-year-old jonin who couldn't figure out to check a fucking washing machine hose before taking a nosedive into a soapy barrel of water?

_Probably he's thinking how he should have asked someone else to marry him,_ Sakura thought, instantly infuriated by the very possibility. She crossed her arms over her sopping wet chest, managed a stiff, "Thank you," and pushed right past him, collecting what remained of her dignity and making directly for the shower.

…

It was quiet as they lay in bed. Sasuke knew Sakura was angry about something, though he couldn't guess as to what. _She_ wasn't the one who'd had her masculinity shredded right in front of her. But she'd huffed her way to bed and made no attempt to engage him sexually, which only ever happened three days a month and not one hour past that.

She was pissed.

"…you're pissed."

He knew she was awake, since her huffy, aggravated breathing gave her away. "Trying to sleep, Sasuke-kun," she reminded him curtly, laying on her side facing away from him and not moving to snuggle up against his side the way she usually did.

As if he could sleep. He was angry, and as far as he was concerned, _she_ had no right to be, after stripping him of his male pride. He sat up in bed and yanked the blanket off of her.

"Why are _you_ mad?" he demanded.

Sakura sat up, too, glaring at him, and he privately felt she was prettiest when she was mad, something he'd rather eat his own Chidori than admit to her. Her hair was still wet from her shower and her green eyes, frustrated and angry, caught the moonlight as they narrowed.

"You just _had_ to go and fix the damn washing machine, didn't you?" she sniped.

"What?"

"There goes _perfect Uchiha Sasuke_ just taking care of everything as always! Really, what do you even _need_ a wife for if you can just handle all this domestic shit yourself?"

"Sakura, you're being _ridiculous._"

"No I'm not, _you_ are! Why even ask me to marry you? It's not like you need any help taking care of yourself!"

"Are you _serious?_ Sakura if you hadn't come home when you did I would've flooded our entire house!"

She blinked, and he realized exactly why she was pissed.

The same reason he was, but reversed.

She'd insulted his masculinity by fixing those pipes so easily…and he'd insulted hers when he'd taken care of the washing machine.

"Oh. So we just kind of…"

Sasuke shook his head, smirking. Perhaps the traditional male and female roles wouldn't apply to an exceptional couple like them.

Sakura's anger vanished, and she giggled as she laid back down against their pillows. "You know, I don't mind taking the trash out every now and then," she said conversationally, nudging his arm with her shoulder.

His smirk widened as he turned onto his side facing her, his fingers tracing the sliver of exposed, taut stomach muscle in a familiar pattern.

"…I'll do the dishes when I get back from Suna," he volunteered.

Sakura's eyes darkened and she pulled him down to meet her lips, his body coming alive at her touch.

(There was, after all, one domestic activity that they were both equally skilled at.)

* * *

**note..** this prompt nearly tripped me up lolz. i'm trying hard as hell to do one a day. ain't easy, but i'm having a good time. :) hope y'all had a great fourth of july!

xoxo daisy :)


	6. out of the mouths of babes

**prompt 6: baby-sitting**

* * *

If there was one thing Sasuke deeply resented, it was being watched.

Of course, maybe he should have thought about that before defecting from his homeland, placing his allegiance with that of several murderous madmen, attacking his loved ones and causing generous mayhem and chaos in a previously peaceful village, all before expecting to come back and live like a normal shinobi as though nothing had happened.

Naturally, there were bound to be consequences for his actions.

The Hokage had been furious, but ultimately understanding. After disabling his chakra so she could give him the ass-kicking of the century, she'd had him healed up and placed on a one-month house arrest so she could gather all the facts surrounding the Uchiha Massacre. Shocking new evidence exonerating Uchiha Itachi as the guilty party would most likely lead to Sasuke's escape from conviction as well, but he had to be patient.

In the meantime, he was forced to share his new apartment with at least one of his former (and possibly future) teammates, all of whom had been placed on a strict rotation with him to make sure he didn't fly off the handle again.

He supposed he should have been grateful that the Hokage hadn't assigned some random shinobi guard to prowl around his limited living space – or some fanatical fangirl, which would have been even worse – but he resented the implication that he was a loose cannon, liable to go off at a moment's notice on a murderous rampage.

(And maybe his past wasn't exactly working in his favor, but still. Everything he'd done, he'd done for a reason. If he wanted Konoha burned to the ground, it would already be in ashes.)

But no. His peaceful return was now disrupted by the constant, unwanted presence of one Haruno Sakura, whose turn had come up in the rotation for the evening.

Well, unwanted was a strong word, but he'd always been a man who valued his privacy. And now that she was older, more mature, and thoroughly stripped of the obsessive qualities that had made her such a pain in the ass when they were kids, her presence in his house wasn't necessarily intolerable.

It was the fact that she was there against her will that rankled his nerves.

Anyone could read her unease. While he sat in the living room, arms folded, pissed off at everything as per usual, she kept to herself, wanting to remain as unobtrusive as possible, seated by the window with a book in her hands. She almost never spoke to him, which he attributed to the fact that after they'd been through so much together, she wasn't entirely sure what to say.

He wasn't either.

Thank you?

Sorry I tried to kill you?

Sorry you tried to kill me?

…yeah, silence was better.

Still, she spared him small smiles whenever he looked her way, and she respected his privacy – as much as her mission to keep an eye on him would allow. She never ate any of his food or messed up any of his things, compared to Naruto and Kakashi, who made themselves completely at home when it was their turn to babysit.

It didn't hurt that the years had been kind to her, either. Sasuke had always known in the back of his mind that she'd be the lucky girl he married one day, when the time was right; he figured it was his right to admire the way her ninja boots framed her legs, or the tight muscle of her stomach whenever she stretched and her shirt rode up. And while she was distracting every now and again, he couldn't say he had much else going on to be distracted _from._

She was the least annoying out of his former teammates, at least at first.

Then her attitude began to change as time went on.

She still respected his apartment and she never tried to disturb him if she could help it. But her unease around him was quickly changing to _impatience._

As though she was frustrated being here.

As though she was _bored._

And for some reason, that pissed Sasuke straight the hell off, because hadn't she been clamoring for him to come back to Konoha? Hadn't she begged him not to leave in the first place? Hadn't she told him that she loved him more than anybody else in the world?

…granted, it couldn't be terribly much fun, spending ten hours a day in uncomfortable silence. He knew she was a kunoichi, that she worked with her body as frequently as he did, and that she was bound to become restless with so much inactivity.

But the Sakura of memory would have loved nothing more than forced one-on-one time between them. This Sakura, sixteen and a perfect stranger in many ways, seemed frustrated. She wasn't even reading her books anymore, just sitting with her arms folded glaring out the window.

Three days' of that, and Sasuke had had enough.

"What?" he bit out sharply from the sofa, when Sakura had huffed a sigh for the eightieth time.

"What?" she snapped back, unusually sharp with him. She didn't bother looking at him.

"What's your problem?" he demanded. He didn't like that she wouldn't look his way. There was a time when he could have coughed, and he would have had her complete and utter attention. This was unacceptable.

"What do you _think?_" Sakura got up off the window seat, hands on her hips. "I'm stuck in here for countless hours with absolutely nothing to do, when I _should_ be training for the jounin exams!"

It was confirmed, then; she was bored being here with him, and wanted to stretch her legs. He ignored the sting to his ego that there was a place Sakura would have preferred to be than with him – it wasn't like he could blame her, he was going crazy himself – and focused instead on her lack of gratitude. How dare she pretend like all she wanted was him to come home, and then when he finally did, she didn't even care?

"Instead of all that, I'm stuck _babysitting._"

Sasuke was on his feet, red eyes flaming. "Say that again," he sneered, advancing on her.

Sakura didn't flinch under his temper, a new development. She held her ground, still looking very, very annoyed, and very, very pretty. He didn't know if he wanted to kiss her, or kick her ass. Both sounded pretty appealing right now.

"You heard what I said," she snapped. "Do you think I _enjoy_ being here? When you won't even so much as _talk,_ I just have to sit here waiting for nothing since we both know if you wanted to attack Konoha, you would have."

Smart girl.

"I don't know why I always get stuck doing this either. Way more than Naruto or Sai or Kakashi-sensei. But…"

"Stuck, huh?" Sasuke demanded, stopping when he was two inches away from her, using his height to his advantage; she had to look up at him from this angle, and he knew her shorter stature was a constant source of insecurity. Predictably, she blushed at the close proximity, an homage to her prior self and one he enjoyed. She looked good in pink.

"Yes, stuck," she shot back, poking his chest with her index finger; if she'd used chakra, it would have left a hole. "Stuck here where you can't even stand to look at me for too long. Stuck here forcing my company on someone who completely rejects it. Stuck here inconveniencing you and…"

"Who says I can't stand to look at you?" Sasuke lowered his voice and watched – with carefully-concealed excitement – the way Sakura's eyes darkened from bright, dazzling green almost to black. He let his gaze drop from her face to her figure, taking in the view from above.

"I say it," Sakura said with a valiant stab at bravery, even as her face turned from pink to scarlet. "You never wanted me around to begin with. I'm not stupid. If I wasn't assigned to be your babysitter, I wouldn't see you at all."

That word again. Babysitter. _Babysitter._

Perhaps his most hated word.

She would regret calling him that.

"I'll teach you," he murmured, ducking his head, "to call me a fucking baby."

* * *

The mission scroll rested on the desk in front of Tsunade, the one dictating the parameters of Uchiha Sasuke's house arrest. Three shinobi and a kunoichi had accepted the mission one month ago. Naruto, Kakashi, Sai, and Sakura.

Tsunade smirked as she bent over the scroll and scratched Sakura's name off the list.

Conflict of interest.

And as long as Tsunade was Hokage (hopefully not much longer, if a certain blonde knucklehead would settle down and fly straight), Operation Babysit Uchiha Brat was not going to turn into _boyfriend-sitting._

(Those kids were going to turn her hair gray one day.)

* * *

**note..** day six. hope you enjoyed. if you didn't don't tell me about it. just go anonymous and take to my tumblr and tell me what a bad person i am for disliking rapefics. that seems to be the consensus lately.

lololol what the hell.

xoxox daisy :)


	7. loose cannon

**prompt 7: the deep end**

* * *

Ebisu-sensei was exactly the way Sasuke remembered him. Uptight, rigid, glasses firmly in place on his face but unable to conceal any of the frown wrinkles around his mouth. From what Sasuke could recall, he was very well-respected among the shinobi instructors, and young Academy students were lucky to have him for a teacher.

"Uchiha-san," said Ebisu-sensei politely, standing when Sasuke entered the room, arms crossed over his chest. He inclined his head in greeting. "I regret that we have to meet under such unpleasant circumstances."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed.

"Won't you please have a seat."

Sasuke remained standing. This might very well be Ebisu-sensei's classroom, but like hell would Sasuke relinquish control of the conversation for even a moment. He hadn't been this angry in a very long time, and if he needed to reach for his sword, he wanted to make sure it was handy.

"Cut to the chase," he growled. "Why am I here."

Ebisu-sensei didn't flinch at the police captain's infamous temper, but Sasuke was well-trained, and caught the slight flex in the older man's jaw that showed his agitation.

"As your wife must have told you by now," he began, taking a seat behind his desk and surveying Sasuke's towering figure from behind his black glasses, "I've called you here to discuss your daughter's…behavioral problems."

"Behavioral problems," Sasuke echoed quietly.

"She's causing quite a bit of mischief among her peers," Ebisu-sensei explained, pulling a folder out from the bottom drawer of his desk. "For example, last Tuesday, she spent the duration of target practice fashioning dolls out of kunai. She's easily distracted, often reading ahead in her scrolls during lectures. She's got her head in the clouds, that one. She's a _dreamer._ Given her impressive lineage, I would have expected her to show greater focus in her kunoichi training, but her priorities seem to be playing with the other children and memorizing chapters of the text we haven't yet begun to examine. And without immediate behavioral correction, she's shaping up to become a…"

"_Excuse me?_" a vicious, feminine voice snarled from the doorway. Sasuke would have smirked, if he wasn't so furious; it would seem that Ebisu-sensei had far more to fear than merely his own righteous rage.

"U-Uchiha-san," stammered the teacher, scrambling to his feet immediately in the presence of a (terrifying) woman. Uchiha Sakura stormed inside the classroom, green eyes blazing, pretty lips curled into a sneer. Despite her slim build and short stature, she was easily the scariest thing in the universe when angered. And Ebisu-sensei had chosen _quite_ the wrong moment to insult their daughter.

"Sorry I'm late," she ground out. "Emergency at the hospital. But it seems I came just in time…_what the hell_ do you think you're saying about our daughter?"

"Well, if you…I mean…you see, Uchiha-san, if you'd read my disciplinary review for Mikoto-chan, you would have seen that…"

"That _what?_" Sakura snapped, coming to stand beside her husband, the energy in the air around her charged and almost crackling. "That she's a lovely, intelligent, caring _five-year-old child_ behaving as _all_ five-year-old children act?"

Ebisu-sensei nervously rubbed the back of his neck, keeping his covered eyes locked on Sakura's infamous fists. Sasuke actually _did_ smirk that time. When her anger wasn't directed onto him, it was sometimes rewarding to watch her go off the deep end. Like a terrifying mother hen guarding her chicks.

"Er…well you see, the circumstances surrounding such a…a special child with so much promise, like Mikoto-chan, we simply expect…well…rather _more._ And she is very…"

"Perfect," Sasuke said softly, injecting as much malice as he possibly could into his eyes without activating his Sharingan. Because that was _exactly_ what Mikoto-chan was: flawless. And the sooner her asshole teacher acknowledged it, the better.

"Our daughter _may_ be easily distracted," Sakura snapped, "because she's _bored _with the _curriculum._ Perhaps it's her _teacher_ that doesn't recognize a _gifted child_ when he sees one, but she is miles ahead of the other students by now, and growing restless with the slow pace other students require. And if she's a _dreamer?_ Then we must've done _something_ right by her because frankly, I don't ever want to meet a five-year-old that doesn't _dream._ Now unless you want an up-close demonstration of what Mikoto-chan will be capable of in a few short years," here, she cracked her knuckles ominously, and Sasuke's smirk widened, "you'll take that disciplinary report, tear it to shreds, burn the pieces, and attempt to teach Mikoto-chan something worthwhile or rest assured, we'll find someone else who will!"

* * *

"Can you believe the _nerve_ of that asshole?" Sakura hissed on the walk home.

Sasuke grunted in agreement, trying to conceal his pleasure at the way his wife had handled business; he kept a close eye on his daughter, skipping ahead of her parents and singing a tuneless song. She was tiny for her age, which was to be expected; Sakura barely cleared five feet at 26 years old, and he'd been a shrimp when he was Mikoto-chan's age, too.

"Anyone who looks twice at Mikoto-chan knows she's special," Sakura huffed. "She's not being challenged by Ebisu-sensei. And he thinks that because she's so distracted from her schoolwork, she's not working up to her full potential. Bastard. _Bastard._ I should teach that prick a lesson."

Picturing the splinters she'd left of the pompous educator's desk, it was impossible to suppress a chucle.

"I think you already did, babe," he said dryly, grinning as he draped an arm around Sakura's slim shoulders. She looked up at him and her face broke into a smile, followed by a girlish giggle.

Everyone always assumed that of the small Uchiha family, it was police captain Sasuke who was to be feared; but times like these, he was glad he'd married the village psychopath.

Sometimes it paid to have a wife who was even crazier than he was.

* * *

**note..** day seven, complete. i like the idea of sasuke being obnoxiously protective of his kids, i can't see him being anything but. and of course sakura will take no one's shit ever, not when their kid's involved.

hope you enjoyed!

xoxo daisy


End file.
